Minsk, April 19 - Russia has agreed to increase oil flows to Belarus in 2014, a media report here said Friday citing a Russian official.

Russia will ship 23 million tonnes of crude oil to Belarus this year, up 10 percent from that in 2013, Xinhua quoted Russia's Federation Energy Ministry Press Secretary Olga Golant as saying, in a sign of thawing relations between the two countries.

Russia would deliver 21 million tonnes of oil (420,000 barrels per day) via pipelines and 2 million tonnes of oil by rail, the official added.

Minsk (Belarus), Sep. 17 : Reacting to the recent attack on Indians in Melbourne, Australia, External Affairs Minister S. M. Krishna said on Thursday that the incidents were unfortunate.

He said the Indian Government would take up the issue with the Australian authorities.

Krishna issued the statement after concluding his two-day visit to the Central Asian state of Belarus. His statement came even as Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd warned Indian students living in Australia not to take the law into their own hands.

On Wednesday, Krishna visited the Victory Square Monument in the city and paid tribute to soldiers who had laid down their lives during the World War II while fighting the Nazi invaders.

"This is the first ever visit by an Indian Minister for External Affairs to Belarus. I think it is an important visit with a view to further cement and strengthen relationship to mutual advantage," said Ramesh Chander, Indian Ambassador to Belarus.

Lajcak made the remarks in the capital of Minsk after meetings with leaders of the Belarusian opposition. A thawing of relations between Lukashenko and the European Union, initiated by Brussels in May in hopes of developing democracy in Belarus, was not showing sufficient results, he said.

Minsk - Belarusian President Aleksander Lukashenko admitted he fixed the results of a March 2006 national vote, saying he fudged the numbers downward, according to a Thursday interview in Russia's Izvestia newspaper.

"At the time 93 per cent of the people voted for me, and so I gave the command for a result of around 80 per cent," the authoritarian leader told Izvestia.

Minsk - Belarus's economy is showing signs of a turnaround, but the country's dwindling foreign currency and gold reserves are a major concern, a representative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said Tuesday.

"We consider this (the shortage of currencies and gold) one of the main problems of the Belarus economy," Marek Belka, senior representative of the IMF to Belarus, said at a meeting with Belorussian Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky.

It was the second tranche of a credit programme aimed at increasing Belarus' gold reserves and creating an emergency fund to cushion future economic shocks, said Anatoly Drozdov, National Bank of Belarus (NBB) spokesman.

The IMF in January approved a stand-by loan to Belarus with a total value of 2.46 billion dollars, aimed at stabilising the former Soviet republic's economy.

Minsk - A group of US Congressmen on Tuesday were in Belarus on Tuesday for meetings with authoritarian President Aleksander Lukashenko.

The visit by the US legislators marked a step towards a thaw in relations between Minsk and Washington, which until recently enforced wide-ranging sanctions against Belarus for Lukashenko's poor human rights record.

Minsk - Work on Belarus' first nuclear power reactor will begin next year with billions of dollars in financing from Russia, a senior Belarusian energy official said Friday.

"We have resolved the issue of financing completely," said Vladimir Semashko, Belarus Vice Premier. "Russia will be providing assistance."

Construction of the atomic power station will start in 2010 and end in 2018, with Russia providing 9 billion dollars in financing as well as engineering advice, Semashko said at a Minsk press conference.

Minsk - Rising demand in Poland for recreational narcotics is behind a sharp spike in the smuggling of drugs and intermediate chemical substances from Russia through Belarus, an official from Belarus' KGB secret police said Tuesday.

Clandestine shipments of psychotropic narcotics manufactured in Russia and ready for use in Poland or elsewhere in the European Union shot up a whopping ten times over the same period, said Valery Nadtochaev, a KGB spokesman.

Minsk - Belarusian authorities have arrested a Polish radio reporter for broadcasts criticising the government and the economy, the Belapan news agency reported Friday. Ivan Roman, a Belarusian national working for the Poland-based broadcaster Radio Racja, violated media law with reports of economic and social problems in the former Soviet republic, Belarus KGB security officials in the central province Hrodno claimed.

KGB agents arrested Roman at home and questioned him at a police station, before releasing him late on Friday.

Radio Racja transmits from the Polish city Bialystok, near the Belarusian border.

Minsk - The spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians in the former Soviet republic Belarus on Friday asked state officials to tighten access to the internet, citing a moral threat to the country's youth.

"The state should control internet content," said Metropolitan Filaret, head of the Orthodox Christian church in Belarus. "I sincerely hope that the government will not leave the problem of open access to dirty resources alone," he said.